Subject: Welcome to QRPBBB! 20220217 revision

######## WELCOME TO QRPBBB! ########

QRPBBB--the QRP Bulletin Board (Bodged edition) is a minimalist decentralised
bulletin-board network for decentralised minimalist Amateur Radio operators who
want to send bulletins.

The intention of QRPBBB is to be an *exclusively on-air activity* without
demanding hardware requirements. Full participation can be possible using a
old/slow/cost-a-nickel Unix computer with an audio interface to a cheap
hand-held transceiver. Additionally to message distribution, it has features of
interest to Radio Mesh Networking experimenters.

QRPBBB has been designed primarily to work around the problem of activity
level, and sites will be able to exchange messages even if the local RF Digital
activity is non-existent. It does this by providing the option to pass content
over the APRS digipeater network, and its 'multicasting' and decentalization
allows sites to immediately participate without the pre-arrangement and
persistence of another station as required for point-to-point networking.

In spite of the very limited capacity of 1200 baud transmissions, and the
demands required to operate on the APRS mesh without impacting other stations,
it will be entirely possible to have collaboration with others in a comfortable
timeframe. The potential is there to create a community reminiscent of Usenet
newsgroups as it operated in the late 1980s, when link bandwidth was limited
and content was by necessity high quality. Poor use of the network received
immediate feedback-- if not from other users, the sender's own resources were
impacted (including their wallet..) That the original Usenet sites were
primarily Academic institutions also imposed usage conditions very similar to
those for Amateur Radio licenses.

The "bodge" in the name refers to using a Netnews newsserver as its message
database backend, instead of providing its own as the original QRPBB project
intended. This has the advantage of being a compatible with familiar Newsreader
software (tin, nn, trn, pan, gnus..) A disadvantage however is running a
newsserver is a skill found in only the most wizened of UNIX sysadmins.

The software...is unashamedly simple. It's the software equivalent of building
a transceiver from discrete parts on offcuts of PCB. Like the homebrew QRP
radio built from scratch, you get full marks for just making a contact. There
is no use of 3rd-party or rarely-used modules with cascading dependencies, and
the choice of 'obsolete' Python-2 provides a static programming environment.
Although it is written in Python, there are no fancy language tricks done to
impress on Code cut&paste sites (okay, there might be one..) and should be easy
to improve and reimplement by even casual programmers.

At the moment the 'homepage' for the QRPBBB Project is an Onion website-- use
Tor-Browser to conveniently access it:
http://o6veojxrfutdwwsriyxbsgimvrnwyzpezexo2g6q4pknutzvibt3rbqd.onion/QRPBBB/
